I stopped myself from asking if this is not the fifth boy or sixth you are leading astray, him waiting without hope for something you will never give him, because that is what you give, is it not, your eyes upon his eyes, your ears for whatever he says, your lips for his lips, all things you can give and take away, and nothing that he wants. Or is he your tenth? Instead I said, “Where is this slaver?”
The slaver was from the North, trading illegally with Nigiki, but he and his caravans, full with fresh slaves, had set up camp in the Uwomowomowomowo valley, not even a quarter day’s ride from Malakal and quicker by just going down the hill. I asked Leopard if the man had no fear of bandits.
“A pack of thieves tried to rob him near the Darklands once. They put a knife to his throat, laughed that he had only three guards that they easily killed and how is it that he had no weapon himself, with such cargo? The thieves fled on horseback, but the slaver sent a message by talking drum that reached where the thieves were going before they approached the gate. By the time the slaver reached the gate the three robbers were nailed to it, their belly skin flayed open, their guts hanging out for all to see. Now he only travels with four men to feed the slaves on the journey to the coast.”
“I have great love for him already,” I said.
When we reached my lodgings, I tiptoed past the innkeeper, who told me two days ago that I was one moon behind in rent, and while scooping her huge breasts in her hands, said there were other ways to pay. In my room I grabbed a goatskin cape, two waterskins, some nuts in a pouch, and two knives. I left through the window.
The Leopard and I went by foot. From my inn we would leave through the third city wall, going under the lookout to the fourth and outer wall, which went around the whole mountain and was as thick as a man lying flat. Then from the South fort gate, out to the rocky hills and right down into the valley. The Leopard would never travel on the back of another animal, and I have never owned a horse, though I have stolen a few. At the gates, I noticed the boy walking behind us, still jumping from tree shadow to tree shadow and the ruined stumps of the old towers that stood long before Malakal was Malakal. I slept here once. The spirits were welcoming, or maybe they did not care. The ruins were from people who discovered the secret of metals and could cut black stone. Walls with no mortar, just brick on top of brick, sometimes curving into a dome. A man from the sand sea who counted ages would have said old Malakal was from six ages ago, maybe more. Surely at a time when men needed a wall as much to keep in as to keep out. Defense, wealth, power. In that one night I could read the old city; rotten wood doorways, steps, alleys, passages, ducts for water foul and fresh, all within walls seventy paces high and twenty paces thick. And then one day, all the people of old Malakal vanished. Died, fled, no griot remembers or knows. Now blocks crumbed to rubble that twisted direction here and there, and around, and back and down what used to be an alley, halted at a dead end with no choice but to go back, but back to where? A maze. The boy held back so far behind us he was at this point lost.
“Truth, you can rip a man’s head off in one bite and yet he’s more afraid of me. What is his name?”
The Leopard, as always, walked off ahead. “I never bothered to ask,” he said, and laughed.
“Fuck the gods, if you are not the worst of the cats,” I said.
I held back a few paces, until I too lost myself in shadow. I saw the boy trying to go from stump to stump, ruin to ruin, crumbling wall to crumbling wall. Truth, I could have watched him for as long as it was dark. He fell deep in the ruins that were not that deep, and tried to walk himself out of them. As he began to run, his smell changed a little—it always does when fear or ecstasy takes over. He tripped over my foot and landed in the dirt. Perhaps my foot was waiting for him.
“What is your name?” I asked.
“No business it be for you to know,” he said, and stood up. He puffed his chest up and looked past me. He looked older than before, one of those who might be ten and five years, but were still ten in the mind. I looked at him, wondered what would be left when the Leopard no longer had use for him.
“I could leave you in these ruins and you will be lost until daylight. And where will your precious Leopard be then, tell me?”
“Is just brick and shit nobody want.”
“Careful. The ancestors will hear you, and then you will never leave.”
“All him friends fool as you?”
The first one I saw, I picked up and threw at him. He caught it in the quick. Good. But he dropped it as soon as he saw it was a skull.
“He don’t need you.”
I turned away, back to where I knew the gate would be.
“Where you going?”
“Back to drink some good soup from a bad woman. Tell your, whatever you call him, that you said he didn’t need me, so I left. That is if you can find your way out of the ruins.”
“Wait!”
I turned around.
“How I get out of this place?”
I walked past him, not waiting on him to follow. I stepped in cold ash, the fire long gone out. Sticking out of the dirt were pieces of white cloth, candlewax, rotten fruit, and green beads that might have been a necklace. Someone tried to reach an ancestor or the gods more than a moon ago. We made it out of the ruins and the last of the trees to the edge of the valley. Another night with no moon.
“What do they call you?” I asked.
“Fumeli,” he said to the ground.
“Guard your heart, Fumeli.”
“What that mean?”
I sat down on the rock. Foolishness it would be to try to go down to the valley in this dark, though I could smell the Leopard was halfway down already.
“We sleep till first light.”
“But he—”
“Will be right down there fast asleep until we wake him tomorrow.”
Two thoughts while I slept that night.
The Leopard says too many things that slip off him like water does oil, but sticks to me like a stain. Truth, there are times I feel like I should wash him out. I am always happy to see him, but never sad when he is gone. He asked me if I was happy and I still didn’t understand either the question or what knowledge he would get from an answer. Nobody smiles more than the Leopard but he speaks the same in happiness and sadness. I think both are faces he puts on before matters that strike deep, first in the heart. Happiness? Who needs happy when there is masuku beer? And spicy meat, good coin, and warm bodies to lie with? Besides, to be a man in my family is to let go of happiness, which depends on too many things one cannot control.
Something to fight for, or nothing to lose, which makes you a finer warrior? I have no answer.
I thought of the children more than I believed I would. Soon it was something I felt like a slight pound in the head, or a quickening of the heart, that even when I told myself it was gone, there was no worry, and I have done good by those children, or at least the best I could do, the feeling came that I had not. A dark evening becomes darker. I wondered if it was yet another one of the things the Sangoma left as a stain on me, or maybe it was a mild madness.
I woke up to the boy bent over me.
“Your other eye shine in the dark, like a dog,” he said. I would slap him but a new cut above his right eye glimmered with blood.
“How slippery the rocks are in the morning. Especially if you don’t know the way.”
The boy hissed. He picked up the Leopard’s bow and quiver. I wondered if any person ever made me shiver like the Leopard did this boy.
“And I do not snore,” I said, but he was already running down into the valley, until he stopped.
He walked, he sat on a rock and pondered, he waited until I was just paces behind him, and set off again. But not very far, for he didn’t know where to go.
“Rub his belly,” I said. “It pleases him. Great pleasure.”
“How do you know that? You must rub all sorts of men.”